My fingerprints were completely legible and I didn't have any issues. When I hit the 18 week mark I called them and I swear I could hear the call center agent's jaw drop when I told her it's been 18 weeks and my credit card hasn't even shown a charge yet. She looked it up and said they had just processed it the Friday before (I called on a Monday) and that it would be mailed out the next day. I think it was a combination of the holidays and I'm sure they probably misplaced my application and processed it out of order. I had it in hand two weeks later. She advised me that it should take about 1 week to reach someone in the US, but it would take at least 2 since I'm in Canada. I've found USPS to be fairly reliable, but sometimes people get unlucky and their mail takes much longer than normal to arrive. If it reaches a month and you haven't received it, I would start looking into asking them if they could print out another copy and resend it (not sure if they do this).
When I called about my background check the person was very helpful and informative, especially since I was outside of normal processing times. I just happened to be very unlucky.
